Photo by ep_jhu.I made a brief note of this Capital Business story in today’s morning’s roundup. But upon further consideration, I felt it necessary to highlight that the guy who runs Discovery Communications made $42.6 million last year.
What precisely did David M. Zaslav do to earn this year’s honor as the local CEO with the biggest haul? The Post explains:
That represented a 264 percent increase from 2009.
The bulk of Zaslav’s pay, about 84 percent, was derived from stock and option awards, or equity pay, aligned with the growth of Discovery’s stock. Shares of the Silver Spring-based cable programming giant traded as low as $14 in 2009, but hovered around $42 per share by the close of last year. Profit in 2010 also climbed 19 percent year over year to $653 million.
Discovery, which declined to comment for this story, cited Zaslav’s accomplishments in its proxy statement, including his “success in driving quality content . . . and strong advertising sales that outperformed other major cable groups.”
Tripling the company’s stock price and increasing profits: yup, that’ll do it.
If you really want to be reminded that there were plenty of people who made more money in 2010 than many of us would ever know what to do with, the entire list of the top-earning CEOs can be read below.
